Growth and development of some organs and tissues in lamb carcasess

Crossing Ossimi rams with Rahmani ewes was associated with increasing body weights of crossbred lambs relative to Ossimi lambs during the period from birth till 6 months of age. Lambs after 6 months of age, usually pass through a store period which means that they grow rather slowly. However the lambs rapidly recover growth potentiality and increase in body weight, gain and absolute weight increase. This tendency of growth and development indicate that early growth is normally faster than growth later in the lamb´s life. Using crossbred lambs takes advantage of heterosis expressed in increased growth rate and carcass value of crossbred lambs. Male lambs showed highly significant effect on growth and development of bone, muscular and fatty tissues of lambs, due to their inherent potential to grow faster than females.The growth of muscle, after birth is largely occurs by the increase in the length and thickness of muscle fibres. Muscle development after birth is influenced by age, nutrition, location of the muscle, lamb weight, sex, heredity and environmental factors. The meat of lambs at 2 and 6 months of age is finer grained than the meat of lambs at 10 months of age.